Browsing by Subject "ruoanvalmistuskurssit"

This study aims to find out what kind of experiences the cooking and food preparation courses, organised together by the Koto-office of-a southwestern Finnish city and local Martta organisation, gave to the participants and instructors of the course. The courses aim to promote integrated and integrating housewives' and their families' integration and welfare. The law of promoting integration (1386/2010) obliges cities and municipalities to organise activities that advance integration of the integrated people. The target of these activities is to facilitate the everyday life of integrated people in their new homeland and culture. Learning new skills and knowledge is seen through the socio-constructivist approach in this research. The essential idea is to learn new things in addition to already known and adopted skills and knowledge. Learning is modified on the basis of past human experiences. Social situation, supporting learning surroundings and interaction will influence the learning of new skills. Previous comparable researches have shown that co-operative learning and peer learners promote learning in multicultural learning situations. The data were collected through two theme interviews directed to the instructors of the courses, with reflective feedback discussions directed to four participants of the courses, interviews as of a special social welfare worker of City's Koto-office and with diary notes of the author herself and as well with participating observation during the cooking and food preparation courses. The data were analysed by using qualitative content analysis and by classifying the diary notes and notes from the observations. The conscious and unconscious othering was strongly emphasized in the author's own diary notes and observations. It appeared mostly in the conclusions drawn from the author's own experiences. Othering is at its worst when compartmenting people on wrong grounds. Othering can arise, from the activity between individuals, but also result from the acts of the city politicians as in the present research. The other results of the present research were identical with prior comparable researches of the richness and the great importance of peer support in multicultural learning situations. Learning is not seen only as the learning of new skills or knowledge, but as a collective factor enhancing understanding of cultures and on the other hand as a factor retaining the own cultural background of oneself. Understanding of diversity as a strength of learning is also essential in this context. Since this learning context that is open only for a narrow group, the future challenge will be to continue this experiment within basic or other general education.